1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to traffic dispatching systems and, more particularly, to traffic error correcting circuits for use therewith.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Traffic dispatching system circuits, particularly suitable for use in drive-in banks and the like, have been provided for efficiently controlling or directing the movement of vehicular or pedestrian traffic or other moving units from a dispatching or entrance station to a plurality of attendants at serving or receiving stations by accepting electrical traffic request signals (known as teller "calls") and request cancel signals from the receiving stations as they are generated, and subsequently presenting instruction messages at the dispatching station in a predetermined sequence. The messages are preferably presented by means of visual displays of numerical indicia corresponding to the serving or receiving stations. The traffic request signals and the traffic request cancel signals can be generated either manually or automatically. Examples of such dispatching system circuits are found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,206,722, which issued on Sept. 14, 1965 to O. T. Gustus, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 3,588,808, which issued on June 28, 1971 to R. T. Gustus; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,886,414, which issued on May 27, 1975 to myself W. J. Brier.
In the operation of a typical dispatching system circuit, an error condition can occur whenever traffic fails to correctly respond to the message displayed by the instructing means at the dispatching or entrance station. When a customer, for example, travels to an incorrect receiving station, the station to which the customer was directed will appear to the dispatching system circuit to be in use unless the operator or teller at that station generates or places another traffic request signal to the dispatching system circuit. However, this requires the attendants at the receiving stations to constantly monitor the traffic movement. Furthermore, since dispatching system circuits are frequently used in drive-in banks wherein a small number of tellers at a remote location conduct business transactions with an even larger number of customers at remote receiving stations, the attendants, usually very busy, frequently fail to manually generate additional request signals to correct for customer errors. As a result, one or more receiving stations may not be used for an extended period of time.